1. The EHR user interface (UI) design above displays each patient encounter in a single-screen view.
(See A Single-Screen EHR Design for the Patient Encounter).
The window above is a mockup of what the user's EHR screen would look like.
When you're ready, advance to the next slide.
2. Each category of data is assigned to a pane of fixed location on the screen – for instance, the Assessment and Plan
is displayed in the pane on the bottom left.
This design is similar to that of a paper encounter form (see Why T-Sheets Work), except that both the panes and
the fields within those panes can be interactive (see above and Pane Management -- Part 1).
3. Navigation from the screen displaying one encounter (for instance, an office visit) to another is accomplished
by selecting the date of the visit in the date-sorted list at the upper right of the screen.
Each screen is a snapshot, showing the patient’s story as it existed at the time of that visit.
4. This is the story of an elderly woman who had been followed for years for mild glaucoma in her right eye (OD).
While previous encounters exist, for this demo we begin with her office visit of 10/15/2008.
Please take a minute to understand how the information in each pane fits together to give us a sense of this
patient.
5. In this design, information that has changed since the previous exam is shown in blue font, while unchanged information
is shown in black font.
We see that in 2008 her eye pressure is well controlled just with Alphagan drops, that her visual field and optic nerve
are normal, and that she is planning to move to Florida.
Continue to step through the subsequent slides at your own pace, taking enough time to see her story unfold.
6. The next time we see this patient is more than three years later. The information is mostly self-explanatory.
Like many patients, she has not been consistently taking all of her medications, in this case Alphagan drops for glaucoma.
Her pressure of 31 is too high for her optic nerve, which shows damage to the lower (inferior) half. The cross-hatching in
the upper (superior) half of her visual field indicates loss of vision in that region, corresponding to the damage inferiorly to
her optic nerve.
7. Note that information unchanged from the previous exam is less prominent not only because it is not in blue
font, but also because it displays in exactly the same location on the screen, meaning that attention is not
drawn to it.
8. This single-screen design, showing new information in all categories, can help the clinician do a better job of
taking care of the patient. The fact that this patient’s daughter was recently diagnosed as a glaucoma suspect
suggests a possible high level of anxiety, both for the patient and for her family. This design allows the clinician
to keep in mind the emotional and social aspects of a disease while managing the medical aspects.
9. Information which has changed significantly since the last exam or which is markedly out of range can be
emphasized by using a different font color -- in this case, red.
